How Your Tweets Are Forever Searchable

What You Thought

What’s True

But what use is information in 2010 without means to quickly search it? Google Replay allows users to search tweets available on a specific date and time. Eventually, “it will reach back to the very first tweets.” Your instantaneous reaction will become instantaneously searchable ad infinitum.

We still don’t know whether user’s profile information, followers, geo-locational data and deleted tweets will be available. Will users be classified like books?

Twitter’s terms of use relinquish any intellectual property rights in material posted and claim the copyright remains in the hands of the posting user. Therefore, Twitter would not claim it held the copyright. The blogosphere consensus maintains that about 90% of all tweets are non-copyrightable statements of facts and references to other facts. Although the specific way of expressing facts has copyrightable potential, 140 characters and common knowledge ideas significantly limit the opportunity for original expressions. Most bloggers also believe the chances of individuals pursuing copyright infringement claims of their tweets are slim to none.

Whether we are discussing tweets made before or after the announcement, current privacy law likely doesn’t cover public tweets. However, there are cases which hold that the fact the privacy one expects in a given setting is not complete or absolute does not render the expectation unreasonable as a matter of law ([[http://lw.bna.com/lw/19990713/s059692.htm] [Sanders v. ABC]] (Cal. 1999)). Holdings like this leave open the possibility for tweeters to claim the tort of intrusion even in a public place.

Although politically unlikely for multiple reasons, a statutory safeguard for tweeters would provide certain protection. There is recent legislative precedent for protecting privacy in public places. However, the Video Voyeurism Prevention Act of 2004 only protects individuals in public places when they reasonably believe their private areas would not be visible to the public. Also tweeters are a far less sympathetic group than victims of voyeurism. Finally, a tweet protection statute would have to be clear that a reasonable person has an expectation of privacy after a specified time following a public tweet.

The Consequences Of A Public Tweet Database

My prediction is that any controversy over this will mirror closely the controversy surrounding Facebook’s introduction of the mini-feed feature. A small but significant group of users will complain about the feature as it is fully introduced and its repercussions are felt. This will result in a public apology and the introduction of new copyright and privacy controls for users to opt-in to. In this case, Twitter will likely allow users to be entirely private, public, or non-archived public. This will somewhat alleviate concerns but less users will opt in to the additional copyright and privacy controls over time. Finally, these controls will be slowly relaxed until they are unrecognizable or entirely removed. The frog will boil slowly.

The final result will more or less mirror the initial concerns. However, users who did not initially give up the service or adopted the service afterwards, will barely be aware of the privacy and copyright issues. Basically, despite whatever ruckus you hear in the coming weeks and months, Google Replay and the Library of Congress now have all your tweets. For better or worse, even though you will slowly age, your tweets will remain forever young.

Forever Young: How Your Tweets Are Being Preserved For Public Consumption

-- By JulianBaez - 16 Apr 2010

What We Were Told

Your Twitter account is public by default. You see an interesting news story on healthcare reform and punch out a reaction in a minute. “Democrats are doubling the deficit and enacting a government take over of #healthcare,” or “Republican #HCR filibuster = 30 million Americans sentenced to death or bankruptcy.”

Your followers, all friends you know personally, see the tweet on their mini-feeds. In 12 hours, it’s no longer visible on your followers’ front pages. If any follower has your tweets forwarded to their phones, it’s in their inbox. As soon as it’s deleted, your tweet is gone (although possibly kept in a telephone company’s text message archive). In two weeks, you can’t even see your momentary reaction anymore. Or so we thought.

What’s Actually Happening

In the summer of 2009, the Library of Congress informed the public that it intended to compile all tweets related to Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination, via twitter no less. This was part of the Library’s Web Archiving plan, originally intended to preserve primary source materials. On April 14th 2010, Twitter announced it would donate its entire archive of public tweets to the Library: “Only after a six-month delay can the Tweets will be used [sic] for internal library use, for non-commercial research, public display by the library itself, and preservation.”

But what use is information in 2010 without a way to quickly search it? Google replay will allow users to search which tweets publicly available on a specific date and time. Eventually, “it will reach back to the very first Tweets every created.” Your instantaneous reaction will become instantaneously searchable ad infinitum.

The Law

Copyright

Twitter’s terms of use relinquish any intellectual property rights in the material posted on the service and claim the copyright remains in the hands of the posting user. Therefore, the Twitter Corporation would not have a claim against the Library of Congress. The blogosphere consensus maintains that about 90% of all tweets are non-copyrightable statements of facts and references to other facts. Although the specific way of expressing facts has copyrightable potential, 140 characters and common knowledge ideas significantly limit the opportunity for original expressions. Most bloggers also believe the chances of individuals pursuing copyright infringement claims of their tweets are slim to none.

Privacy

Copyright law is not the only concern. There’s also the matter of privacy.

The Consequences

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